Mary Church Terrell

Chapter II MARY CHURCH TERRELL

“Whenever I present the justice of woman su rage, I always feel like blushing for shame.”

MARY CHURCH TERRELL L ike many suffragists of the time, Mary Church Terrell didn’t shy away from a fight, like when she reasoned women should have the right to vote in a speech given in 1910 to Washington, D.C., public school teachers. But unlike many suffragists, Mary was fighting two battles at the same time. The daughter of former slaves, she also fought passionately for the rights of black people across the United States. Mary was at the center of these two intersecting fights and became a trailblazer for civil rights. With two degrees, Mary believed education was the way to change hearts and minds toward equality.

“They have heard their grandfathers, or their cousins or their aunts express opinions for or against certain propositions, and they have lazily, good-naturedly accepted them, without troubling themselves to see whether those opinions will stand the test of reason and fact.”

Mary would often describe the arguments against granting suffrage as the exact same arguments used to disenfranchise black men. She spent more than 20 years fighting for suffrage. During that time, she picketed the White House demanding the vote. She urged crowds to break free from outdated beliefs.

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“Why it is unjust to withhold from one half of the human race rights and privileges which are freely accorded to the other half, which is neither more deserving nor more capable of exercising them, seems almost like an insult to those whom one speaks. It certainly seems like a reection upon the intelligence of those to whom such reasons are presented.”

Mary was a pioneer. Though the idea of suffrage was still considered unjust by some, She believed that someday a woman voting would become as commonplace as a woman riding a bike.

“We all remember how shocked we were, when for the rst time in our lives we saw a woman riding on a bicycle through the public streets. The women who rst rode wheels were considered very vulgar and very bold. But for rst one reason and then another, women decided to defy the various communities in which they lived. Then sprang up a great army of women cyclists and soon people became so accustomed to seeing women riding wheels that they did not even turn around to look at them in the street. People had grown so accustomed to the sight that they considered it neither unnatural nor unusual any longer.”

Mary demanded in n speeches and essays ays that white women n include black women in the fight t for the right to vote, te, and urged black men to support the he fight for suffrage in in an essay she wrote te in 1912.

“It is dicult to believe that any individual in the United States with one drop of African blood in his dr veins can oppose woman v su rage. What could be more absurd than to see m one group of human beings on who are denied rights which wh they are trying to secure t for themselves working to fo prevent another group from pr obtaining the same rights? ob For the very arguments which are advanced against wh granting the right of su rage gra to women are o ered by those who have disfranchised tho colored men.”

Mary co-founded and was the first leader of the National Association of Colored Women, a federation of local clubs that viewed winning women the right to vote as a critical step in improving the lives of black people across the country, both men and women.

“The word ‘people’ has been turned and twisted to mean all who are shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, and white instead of black.”

Her words, “lifting as we climb,” became the motto of the NACW.

“Until the path is blazed by the pioneer, even some people who have superior intellects and moral courage dare not forge ahead.”